In Reply to: Wow, your post is just stockpiled with new revelatory information. posted by BluBlood on October 27, 2024 at 10:00:41
Here are some possibilities.
1) Separate football from the rest of the sports and contract with an outside firm to manage it, thereby separating Morgan Center and Ucla from engagement. The intent would be to honor Ucla's commitments to academics, etc., but to enable better management and profits without destroying the edifice that exists at Morgan Center. The incumbents, Jarmond, et. al., will fight to the death to preserve the status quo, so an "outsourcing" contract might be palatable to them if the finances of the status quo get dire enough, which is happening in real time.
2) Attract an institutional sponsor. I'll call this the Oregon model since Nike acts as UofO's corporate sponsor. Here, we could attract a corporate sponsor like Oregon has, or modify the basic model by using an investment firm (Guggenheim owns the Dodgers) to leverage the football brand out of the expiring Ucla carcass. Again, the academic connection would need to stand, Morgan Center would be removed, and the benefit would be a tie up to more capital that could be used to compete in the business of college football.
3) Disband Morgan Center and rebuild it with outside contractors who are not Ucla employees but who, like coaches, have incentive-laden contracts for producing immediate results and who can be fired at-will if these aren't obtained. This is least likely IMO.
Ucla continues to operate as though CFB is a club ala the NCAA era. That is over. The NCAA is gone. CFB always was alwasy suspected to be, but now explicitly is a profit making business. We need a change which recognizes this. Ucla is a bureaucracy, not a business. Let's admit that and let's recognize Ucla is failing at pretending to be a business. We need to stand up to that and restructure.